pulled, the cries grew very faint and almost inaudible
during the few seconds that elapsed before he discovered the struggling
forms from which they proceeded. A glance over his shoulder showed him
a man swimming with one arm, while the other supported a
child--apparently a girl.

With a final powerful stroke the skiff shot alongside the drowning
figures, the oars were jerked in, and Winn, leaning over the side,
seized the girl's arm. At the same moment the man grasped the gunwale
of the skiff. It was no slight task for Winn to get the girl into the
boat, for she was unconscious, and formed a dead weight, that was made
heavier by her soaked clothing. He finally succeeded; and as he laid
the limp form in the bottom of the skiff and took his first good look
at her face, he uttered a cry of amazement, and doubted the evidence of
his senses. How was it possible that Sabella could be there, and in
such a predicament? Could the boat that had just been run into be the
_Whatnot_? If so, who was this man? He turned to look, and to help
him into the skiff; but, to his horror, the man had disappeared.

William Gresham had redeemed his promise with his life. From a cruel
wound, made by a splintered timber, he had bled so freely that his
fast-failing strength was barely able to hold Sabella's head above the
surface until Winn came to her rescue. He recognized the boy, and as
the little girl was lifted from his arms, he closed his eyes with the
peaceful expression of one who is weary and would sleep. Then his
grasp of the skiff relaxed, and without a struggle he slipped across
the invisible line dividing time from eternity. The hurrying waters
closed about him as gently as a mother's arms, and who shall say that
in his death the man had not atoned for his life, or that in the tawny
flood of the great river his sin was not washed away as though it had
never been?

[Illustration: The rescue of Sabella.]

As for Winn, he was overwhelmed and stunned. It was so sudden, so
terrible, and so pitiful. At one moment the man was there, and in the
next he was gone without a word. In vain did the boy look over both
sides of the skiff and over its stern in the hope that the man might
still be clinging to it. Only the swift-flowing waters met his gaze,
and seemed to mock at his efforts to wrest their secret.

The man was gone; there was no doubt of that; and now came the
harrowing question, who was he? Winn had not seen his fa